A Year of Lilies
by ohtobealady
Summary: 1895, heralded by cheers and chimes, leads Robert Crawley to reflect on his parents, wife, children, estate - his life. He comes to realize how, in a single moment, life can change forever - a single moment with the gravity of decades, the effects felt by everyone in a myriad of often unseen ways. This is a story of heartbreak and joy, death and life, and navigating tides of change
1. Prologue

_New Year's Eve, 1895_

It was over champagne and laughter when he looked at her. He looked and he watched the lines around her mouth, those thin creases moving and shifting with her smile. He watched the way they transformed her full, smooth face into something twinkling, shimmering even, and he felt his chest burn warmer at the sight. It was this, after all, the unguarded way the roundness of her face grew fuller and sweeter, the shallow lines that puckered at her cheeks, yes, it was this that he loved most about her. For as English as Mama had taught her to become, as soft as her vowels tried to lie, and as gentle as her teacup could touch its saucer, it was the lines around her laughter that remained the same. Somehow the dust of a Cincinnati store-room stayed tucked there in those infrequent dimples, teasing him with a past he knew nothing of.

And it made him love her so much more. So terribly, terribly much more.

Of course he'd never tell Cora this, certainly not as they stood nearer one another, so near he could easily smell the jasmine on her wrists and throat; so near he felt he could feel the blue of her gaze, the glow of her cheek. No. He'd never say aloud how his chest felt all aflame as he watched her, how his romantic nature recited Byron as her eyes sparkled up toward his.

No; instead he smiled briefly at her, nodded in reply to her soft touch at his arm, and he turned away, letting his palm find the small of her back.

The champagne in his glass danced with bubbles, waltzing and then vanishing against the glass flute. His family gathered nearer, his sister, his brother-in-law, his cousin and wife, Mama, Papa, and Cora. Cora, who drew ever closer to his side.

And as Papa's voice rumbled about, the dainty chimes of midnight helping him to beckon kisses and toasts, Robert said a quick prayer. A wish. A hope for his family, his mother and father as they shared a small kiss, for Cora whose cheek was warm and soft, and for the two little girls asleep upstairs in their feather-down beds. His little girls.

"To 1895!"

 _Yes,_ Robert's prayer answered. _To 1895._


	2. Chapter One - January

_"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?" ~ Edgar Allan Poe._

* * *

 _12th January, 1895_

Robert shifted beneath the warmth of the blankets, and sighing, opened his eyes. The rustle of cotton sheets he'd made with his rousing echoed coldly in the dark, and Robert squinted to the clock beside him but in vain. Regardless of the hour, he knew it was morning, however early. Cora dozed by his side, her hand that lay upon his pillow twitching slightly as if it had detected his movement and threatened to wake her. So Robert stilled. The fire had not yet been relit and the curtains of Cora's bedroom remained drawn tightly together, cloaking signs of life beyond the two of them, and it warmed him.

It must have snowed again, he thought, for there was the accompanying quiet that only comes with a night's snowfall, a silence that somehow makes everything else seem louder. But there was nothing else, no other sounds beyond the small whisper of his movement and the soft in and out of his wife's breath beside him. In lying here, he found that he regretted waking at all, and he rather wished he was still dreaming, nestled closely to his wife.

Of course, it wasn't to be helped. It'd become routine. It wasn't the first time this week that he'd been up before the servants, Papa's sudden trip to London throwing everything into confusion. The meals had to be replanned. The guests arriving at Thursday next had to be written. The London residence had to be opened at once, and Mama's poor humor could only be assuaged with the greatest distance one could manage in a solitary house, big as it was. But Papa saw no other way. After all, the Lords returned to the House four days prior, the Christmas recess ending just the Tuesday before, and Papa said he felt it an obligation to go.

 _Obligation._

Robert had scoffed at the excuse; Papa always felt it an obligation, but Robert knew better.

The truth was that while Patrick did care for the estate, there was no feeling beyond that. There was nothing beyond the pride and dedication to it, the feelings that seemed to be inherited, Robert feeling them even as a child. But while Papa undoubtedly felt care, he couldn't bear to stay at the estate for long. He nearly even dreaded it. He'd told Robert so only three years before as they were driven about a cold and wet London, bouncing against one another in a too-small carriage toward Regent Street.

"It's the inescapable cold that seeps into one's bones," Papa had said as the footman helped him out of the carriage. "It's the creaking and cracking of windows in the frost and the floors of the icy washroom biting at one's feet!"

Robert remembered watching his father simultaneously smile at a passerby, and then again at a sales clerk who held open the door of Hamleys for them. Their faces were bright with excitement, and Robert had listened distantly at Papa expressing what joy he felt at buying his new granddaughter her first Christmas gifts.

It was a day Robert now remembered with some hesitance, the memory leaving him with the feeling one gets at missing a stair in the dark. For as Papa talked more and more, Robert learned what he'd always assumed about his father. Patrick did not like Downton.

Perhaps he never had, that it had been thrust upon him in much the same way that Robert had always assumed it would be thrust upon himself. Of course none of this was a matter of responsibility, of respect, or even of gratitude for the role God had chosen him to fulfill. These things Papa felt in full; these things were palpably there, and they created a weight that seemed to hang around him. Or rather, over him. A dangerous weight - a weight that suffocated fondness, a weight that had laced Papa's too-cheerful voice when he spoke to Robert that day. When he had said what had woken Robert from his reverie of soft knit blankets and pale pink bows and silver rattles with his child's name etched onto the stem.

"And so Cora's not had an heir," he'd shrugged. "We will have Mary to enjoy until she does."

Even lying in the dark, next to Cora's soft whisper of breath, he could hear those words again and again.

 _Until she does._

The words seemed to stick in that moment, and Robert's mind only heard those words thereafter, though his eyes had remembered what his father had done. He'd smiled, he'd chuckled at the Noah's Ark toy display, he'd pointed toward a glass doll, and his mouth had moved as if he were saying something more. But Robert still only remembered that word. The word that darkened the glow of new fatherhood. The word that dulled the sensation of flight he felt when he held his infant daughter.

 _Until._

Mary had been so small. Seven weeks old.

They conceived Edith within the three weeks that followed.

Robert swallowed and pulled the covers over him again, his wife exhaling sleepily at the change beside her. But Robert couldn't remain still now. Early mornings like this, they forced him to acknowledge it. Acknowledge what he'd done.

She'd been born out of that word - _until_. His second child had been created under that same precious weight that touched at his father's words, at least on Robert's part. Not Cora's. He knew that, knew the place where Edith, where Mary, had grown, and it was not a place of _until_. He knew this well, and, too, he well knew that he felt ashamed as he lay in his wife's dark, cold room.

Indeed, he suddenly felt ashamed of more things than he cared to admit. For the longer he considered it, he wasn't sure he minded Papa's being away. It certainly meant more work for himself. It meant more stress, more aggravation, more dealings with Barnes, and Murray, and Jarvis as well who always seemed to look at him in some strange condescending way.

But it also meant that Robert didn't have to face what he didn't understand. He didn't have to name the feeling that lurked around the thoughts of his father. Oh, of course he loved Papa. He was devoted to him. He wanted desperately to gain his approval, to have his blessing and his support in everything.

However, he was lying beside Cora, and he was listening to her quiet breath. No, he couldn't help but to think of something more: Her name. It was a queer thought, but a thought he turned over in his mind nonetheless. Her name. His wife's name, her maiden name, scratched in loops and curls at the bottom of a document, the signature of Grantham marked dutifully besides. And it was this, this thought, that made Robert realize something he was not proud of, something he wished had stayed silent in the snow outside of her room.

Robert did not like his father.

* * *

"There you are."

Cora smiled up at him as he reentered her bedroom, a room that unlike hours before was bright and blue, a fire popping in the hearth. Cora dressed in her velvety pink looked warm and alive here, and her maid, a short unhappy woman, stood behind her settling a pin in the pompadour atop Cora's head. She had not looked to Robert as he came inside, but rather leaned this way and that, inspecting her handiwork in the vanity's reflection. Robert chortled softly at the seriousness of such work, but then stopped short. Both women, then, had looked over at the noise, unamused. Robert cleared his throat, smiled contritely, and nodded.

"You look very nice," he amended pleasantly, and Cora fluttered her eyes away.

"Thank you, darling," she hummed.

Taking her tone as a sign of forgiveness, Robert fell into the armchair nearest the vanity and watched his wife finger a dark curl that fell around her ear. He smiled.

"Were you looking for me?"

"No. Not exactly," he settled more deeply into the chair, and he thumbed the arm of it, twice. "But Mama has asked for you."

"Oh, dear." Cora's pale eyes cut toward him, and Robert suppressed a chuckle at her dismay. Rolling them back toward the mirror, she sighed. He watched, then, as she looked back at Perkins and dismissed her by a quick grin that sent the small woman quickly collecting the things to be taken down. Cora remained quiet meanwhile, taking a bottle of scent from the tabletop and gently pressing the stick to her wrists. The smell of jasmine filled the space.

When the click of the door meant that they were alone again, Cora let out a deep breath. "What is it this time?"

Robert opened his mouth to respond, but could not.

"Is it the flowers? Or perhaps it's the menu for the servant's ball that she was absolutely determined for me to fuddle."

She replaced the perfume from where it came, the glass clinking rather undaintily against another.

"I'm sure it wasn't-"

Cora whirled toward him, "The invitations?"

"What?"

"Oh," she turned on her stool again, lifting from around her neck the long string of pearls that he'd given her after Edith's birth. "Only she dropped the list into my lap at the last minute and I haven't any time at all to address them."

"Hmm?" Robert exhaled and looked away from the necklace now pooled on the tabletop. "Oh, no. I'm sure it's not that."

"Honestly, this whole mess is better left to her."

"I say she seems to think you're well on your way," Robert leaned further back in the chair, and he lifted his chin. "After all, she's not asked after you until now. Surely if you were doing something wrong she'd have taken great pleasure to let you know a week ago."

Cora only chuckled after pressing her lips, her eyes occupied on the lotion she was rubbing into her hands. "One must never interrupt one's enemy when she's making a mistake."

He rolled his eyes. "Even so, she's had a terrible time finding you this morning. Mrs Kent said you were due down a half hour ago."

"Perkins had to help me."

"Help you?" Robert listened to her sigh as she finished with the cream and as she replaced it as well.

"Just a headache is all." Her dress brushed against the fabric of the stool as she stood.

"A headache?" Robert smiled quickly to himself, and then furrowed his brow as Cora glanced to him, pretending as if the question was not as laden with hope as of course it was. "Have you been plagued with headaches? You aren't feeling ill, I hope?"

"No." She pulled at the bodice of her gown and then twisted away from the mirror, moving with purpose past him, but pausing and leaning suddenly toward him to say, "It was an uncomfortable hairpin."

He appreciated her flirting, then, for however playful he asked he had hoped. Six months had stretched on and on without success, and while Mary and Edith were still quite young - and Cora, too, for that matter - Robert felt in some way that time was running short, that her signature at the bottom of the document was beginning to bleed through the paper.

"- first to know, darling. Of course."

She had been talking, and Robert shook away the image of _Levinson_ and found her standing before him instead.

"Of course," he managed, and then when she began toward the door, he stood. "Cora, when you speak to Mama, perhaps don't mention the list. She'll only badger you."

But Cora looked over her shoulder as he reached around her for the knob. "Mama. No. She'll wait; I'm going back to the girls."

Robert sighed, shaking his head. "Cora -"

"I said I'd only be a moment, Robert. Nanny mentioned Edith being upset -"

"Darling," Robert leaned closer to Cora who squared her jaw. "I'm sure that Nanny has it all well in hand. Let's leave her to sort them, shall we? We mustn't disrupt their schedule. They'll be spoilt."

With a huff, Cora took the glass knob from his grasp and pushed through the doors herself, Robert trailing behind to hear her protesting. " _Disrupt their schedule_. I am their mother, Robert -"

"- of course you are, dearest one - "

Her dress hushed him as she turned quickly around, "- and if seeing them for more than just an hour after tea causes them both to be spoiled, then so be it."


	3. Chapter Two - January

He could hear her in the washroom when he finally made it into her bedroom that night. Her candle flickered by her side of the bed, the fire crackled in her fireplace, and the red glow of it warmed him considerably. And the brandy. He may have had too much to drink, it was true, but with Papa gone away there was no one to keep him company, and so absent-mindedly he'd poured little cups of the stuff until he found himself laughing at nothing in particular. Perhaps he needed James to come, indeed. Perhaps Rosamund due in next week for the servant's ball wasn't as terrible a thing as he thought before. Marmaduke would be sure to taper him off - but of course Papa would come with them. And that was enough to taper anyone off.

"Cora?"

He could hear her in there, her sounds echoing around her.

"Cora, is that you?"

Of course it was her. He laughed at himself, and then immediately felt rather silly. With a deep sigh he fell into her bed and struggled with the silken tie of his housecoat. And then the tie of his pajama bottoms.

Cora emerged at some point during his fumbling around and he heard the drawer of her bedside table being pushed closed. Grinning naughtily, he wiggled himself free of his pants.

Cora rolled her eyes.

"What's the matter?" Robert frowned. "Shouldn't we?"

He knew she understood the question, for she tipped her head toward him graciously and then, her housecoat seemingly falling away from her arms, she folded herself into the bed. "Well...I wouldn't refuse a good night's kiss."

Robert rolled toward her, and he kissed the side of her mouth. It was warm.

"Darling..." her hand went to his shoulder, and Robert felt her head move slightly away from him.

He followed her. He distributed some of his weight atop her smaller frame, the thin silk of her pale pink nightgown burned beneath his clumsy fingers, and he desperately wanted it off of her. Yet he couldn't seem to manage it. The soft pads of her fingers would find his palm and bring his hands to her face, where she'd shake her head as they kissed.

And for whatever reason he'd nod, though he wasn't sure why really, until eventually a hand found its way back at her thigh.

Cora, however, was sure.

"Not that darling," she mouthed against his lips. "Kiss me, but...It's not -"

Robert kissed that place again, silencing her. He loved that place, the tender, sweet place at the corner of her lips, the place he felt was reserved just for him and him alone. He kissed her there, and then at her jaw, the line of it where the tired remains of her perfume slept. He took a deep breath in, but frowned. Brandy. He could smell the alcohol on his own breath against her skin and his stomach turned unhappily. He pulled slowly away.

"Is it the drink? Why you don't wish to..." he trailed his words away, embarrassed suddenly. "I admit I did let it get away from me -"

"- No." She shifted beneath his arms, and her chest rose and fell with a deep breath. "It isn't that."

Robert furrowed his brow. "It isn't." His forefinger played at the ruffled cap at her shoulder. "Then you feel tired."

"It's not the right time, is all." She tilted her chin upward, and the corner of her mouth trembled into a smile. "Now then...kiss me?"

He leant downward, but then, he didn't. He only lingered there for a moment before he bobbed up again, questions going around and around, swimming in the brandy...the headache she'd had earlier. The hairpin excuse. The lack of color in her face, the tired circles beneath her eyes. She was more prone to emotion, lately, and they had been more diligent in...trying, as it were. Perhaps she...but perhaps she was.

He blinked. "Oh. Oh, my dearest one."

She blinked up at him, too, but wide-eyed. "Yes?"

"Are you very happy?" He moved his hand to her chin, her cheek.

"What?" She shook her head against the pillow. "I mean, yes. I feel happy. But I don't -"

"Then we shouldn't..." Robert said. He lifted his brows. "Not until the doctor's given his permission."

"Robert, no." She reached a hand between then and pulled at the sheet, bringing it up to her chest. Her face clouded. "It's not the right time, is all."

He couldn't understand, and he felt his face scrunch in confusion. Cora, however, sighed again. Her hand made busywork of the bedclothes.

"Next week, alright? Let's sleep. I feel tired -"

"Dr Clarkson's seen you?"

"No." She slapped the covers against herself. "There was no need, as of this morning."

"What do you-"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, Robert, do I have to spell it out for you? I'm not pregnant. Just as it has been the six times before. I'm not pregnant, so if you don't mind, I'd like to go to sleep without having to relay all of the details."

He let her shift further down into the bed, and he let her fold her hands across her midsection, as if she were protecting herself from something he didn't understand. And he felt like a fool.

"I apologize," he mumbled as he rolled away, as he gathered up his pants and fixed them around his legs again.

She was silent.

"I'll sleep in my dressing room, if you aren't feeling well..."

"Robert…"

" - and I can see I've upset you -"

"- No, don't." He turned to her, and he found her looking at him pleadingly, "Stay. Please."

He swallowed as she buried her cheek into the pillow, her eyes on him.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry as well," he mumbled, and he slowly lowered himself back into the bed. He glanced at her several times as he worked, as he straightened the sheets around him, and then as he sighed. "And why didn't anyone come and fetch me from the dining room. I was nearly under the table after all that. Brandy never suits me."

He delighted in Cora's laugh, and her soft hand against the collar of his pajama top. He felt as she folded it over correctly, and then as her fingertip brushed at the tender skin of his neck. He smiled to himself and closed his eyes.

"You don't mind, do you?"

He hummed, content now that the world was not spinning as it was, his body anchoring itself to her mattress. His wife repeated herself as she traced lines along his skin.

"I mean to say, you aren't upset about it taking such a long time. It's perfectly normal."

He hummed again in reply, but upon the words actually gathering between his ears, Robert frowned, thoughtfully. He'd never considered it abnormal, not really. Of course with Mary it had taken a year, but there was the failed attempt before her, and before it, why they'd hardly known each other at all. Of course it took longer in those days. And then Edith had been so soon after Mary. It happened just as quickly as he'd thought that he should try for another...but they had been trying for some time now. Robert opened his eyes, and he let his head fall toward her.

"And who knows," Cora was saying beside him, her eyes watching the movement of her soft fingertip, her brow bobbing up in some attempt at optimism. "Perhaps boys take longer."

And Robert watched as she forced a smile, and then a glance up to him. He tried to smile in return, but couldn't. In fact, he could manage nothing but a long stare until she broke away, settling down further beside him, leaving him with all these new thoughts, drowning in brandy.

"We only need to keep trying," he heard himself whisper at some length, and beside him, he felt Cora still.

"Yes," was her short response, and Robert exhaled, suddenly very tired.

* * *

It was after the third deep sigh that his mother finally let her pen fall against Papa's desk, her eyes cutting to Robert over her reading glasses. Robert, for his part, let the papers he was holding drop to his knees.

"Are you going to say what's wrong, or should I ring for Nanny and have her interpret for me?"

Robert closed his eyes. "Sorry, Mama. I didn't sleep well."

"No?" he peeked up at her as she straightened her narrow glasses and then picked up her pen again. "My sympathies."

"I mean -"

Again Violet dropped her pen, and turned her head to him.

"- I've had quite a lot to think on as of late."

"Oh?" Violet lifted a brow. "Such as?"

Feeling the truth creeping into his mouth, Robert looked at the closed library door. "Where is Cora?"

"Cora?" He could hear his mother's interest pique. "Is this about Cora?"

"Indirectly, though I would rather it stay between us."

He watched as his mother screwed the top of the fountain pen and replaced it gingerly upon the desktop. She removed her glasses and pivoted to him.

"What is it?"

"And Cora?"

"She's upstairs in the nursery. She won't be down until an hour before tea. She's to go over the menus. Now," Violet tipped her head, ever so slightly as if encouraging Robert to speak. It was funny how he could feel so comforted by his mother, a woman he was oftentimes intimidated by. His mother wiggled her fingers toward him. "What is the matter?"

As Robert tucked the papers he was reviewing into the space between his knee and the arm of the chair, he spoke, "I want to begin by saying that there is nothing wrong -"

"-No?"

"-and that, while I'd rather not let Cora hear any of what I'm about to say, this is in no way a reflection on her. Is that understood."

His mother sighed and rolled her eyes. "Yes, Robert. Now what is it?"

"It's …" Robert pulled in a breath, and upon the exhale, pushed everything out. "Something Papa said has me on edge. And whether he meant something by it or not, I'm not sure. But now I can't stop thinking of it, and I feel I'm pressuring Cora into something that isn't quite fair."

"Something your father said?"

Robert peered up to see his mother lean in.

"What did he say?"

"Something about Mary."

"Mary?"

"It was quite a long time ago, I don't know why I'm thinking of it now -"

"Well, what was it?"

Robert sighed and leaned back in the chair. "That we'll have her to enjoy until we've had an heir."

"And this upset you?"

Robert shrugged. "Yes."

"But why?"

"Because _until_. Until Mama. As if he was not pleased that Mary was born a … well, that she wasn't born a son. That she was some sort of diversion until a son arrived."

Mama was quiet, and after a long moment, Robert dared to peek at her.

"But as I said," he slowed, and then echoed himself from earlier. Her brows drew together at his own interjection. "It was quite a while ago and I'm aware of how silly it is to think on it now. I can't think why -"

"- And Cora?"

Robert met his mother's eyes, his lips still parted from his own speech.

"Why don't you want Cora to hear this?"

But Robert couldn't answer that. He released the hard breath he held and shook his head.

"Robert," his mother's voice had moved behind its lectern. He could sense her spine straighten, could sense her heart evening out its pace - detached and unbiased. "Your father's duty is to pass on Downton to you, and then to your son. You must understand his concern."

"Of course -"

"- And your not wanting Cora to hear this only suggests that you, in some way, blame her, that she is somehow at fault," and then, her voice crept back beside him, warming him again. "Cora is not to blame. _No one_ is to blame. And while your father may not possess a great talent for words - or all expression for that matter - he does care for you, and your children. And Cora."

He didn't look away from her when she fell quiet. Quite like a child, he watched her until he gathered enough sense to nod and then look to his knees. "Thank you, Mama," he muttered, and in his periphery he could see her replace her glasses and pick up her pen.

"You mustn't let your own feelings color the words of others, Robert," she said in response. Quietly. She had begun to work again, glancing at him intermittently. "You've always been sensitive to your own feelings of inadequacy. While most of the time they're quite imagined."

"Are they?" Robert lifted his own papers, and stared at Papa's handwriting along the columns. Numbers jumped around the page, mocking him, and Robert shook his head. "I sometimes feel as if my imagined inadequacies, as you put them, are rather unimagined in the end. They do feel quite real to me."

His mother shifted opposite of him; he could sense the way she held her pen still, her chin turning back toward him. He did not look at her.

"And the one that matters most to all of us, the one Papa must feel so keenly, as I do … it's been six months. I'm not sure what else to do."

Mama, obviously unsure of what he spoke, remained quiet, Robert noticed. Again the pen went slowly to the tabletop. Again she pivoted toward him.

"And now that Cora's lost any hope of it happening -"

"- What are you talking about?"

Robert peered up at his mother who stared at him with hard eyes.

"It, Mama. _Until._ "

After a moment's quiet, Mama understood.

"Lost hope? But why?"

Robert shook his head, frustrated. "Even before it took less time. With Edith we barely waited at all –"

"- Robert. Cora is still very young. You are still very young. Please. Let's not have any more of this defeatist nonsense."

"I'm anxious to get the succession on with. We've talked of perhaps Mary and young Patrick -"

At this, Mama let her hand fall to the table with a slap. Robert peered up at her, and held his breath.

"Are you to marry your daughter off before she's out of the nursery? Don't be ridiculous!" She held up her hand, and the words Robert moved upon his lips fell short. "Trust me when I say that these things take time. I may not know much of how it works, but one thing I know well enough is that trying to … _achieve it_ … is best done in care. No child ever born with such expectations will ever have hope to meet them."

"But it is down to us," he followed. He felt his chest grow tightly. "However that may be true, it is down to us – the succession."

"And it will happen in time. If you want my advice, which I suppose you do, I say to stop. Nothing worth having was ever achieved in haste."

"It's been six months, Mama –"

"—or in only regard for oneself. Do not have a child in spite of your father, Robert."

Robert frowned. "I wouldn't call it spite."

"And you wouldn't because you don't feel angry. But it is spite, Robert. It is in spite of what he said, it is in spite of how you feel of Cora, it is in spite of your daughters. Now. I have much to do."

She was done.

Robert watched his mother turn away from him and then wave him gone, her other hand recollecting the pen she'd abandoned, her head trembling with agitation. Abruptly, it seemed, she began to scratch the ink upon her list of things to accomplish, and feeling not quite satisfied with any of it, any of it at all, Robert looked away.

He collected his papers and replaced them hurriedly into the leather portfolio that Papa had saved them in. His Papa, who was off in London, pushing his work upon Robert, work that Robert was grateful to do, that he couldn't understand how Papa could just pass off, or why Papa could not be bothered with it: with the proper management of things, with staying here and getting things done. Of course he loved it, of course Papa loved all of it, but perhaps love was not enough. Why couldn't Papa just be grateful for what he was given?

"Yes, Mama," Robert said, a practiced response, and then snapped the portfolio shut.


End file.
